Description
‘Commemoration Songs’ is a stark, expressive, and brooding instrumental record. The entire thing was composed and performed by Ville Valavuo, a Finnish artist with a long history of playing guitar for punk and hardcore bands, notably Kohti Tuhoa (La Vida Es Un Mus) and Yleiset Syyt. Like the work of those bands, ‘Commemoration Songs’ addresses a violent world plunging into chaos at an alarming rate, but replaces the howl and squall with patient, warm, nimble constructions. It’s a tremendously effective approach, as eerie and unsettling as pondering state violence and systematic repression. I’m very compelled by the liner notes and the invocation of memory on this record, and I think Valavuo makes a very thoughtful decision by tying these lines of thoughts into music that reaches backwards and forwards in time, aligning with splayed moments of defiance and hope. At times it reminds me of the desolation of Neil Young’s ‘Dead Man’ soundtrack, at times it reminds me of Sun Ra’s drifting glee, and at times it reminds me of the unbodied clarity of ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2.’ But most of the time it doesn’t remind me of anything I’ve ever heard, and maps more clearly onto these shared (I hope) mental patterns of outrage and interconnected grievance, the hunger for a life led in opposition.
Released by Ultraääni of Tampere, Finland in an edition of 500 copies. Silkscreened cover, black vinyl
